This cycle lane scheme is dangerous

13 September, 2018

• CAMDEN’S proposals for bike lanes in Prince of Wales Road are dangerous to pedestrians and should be scrapped. In the proposals Prince of Wales Road is presented as an important link in a greater bike network. This is a fantasy.

It does connect two major roads which are dangerous for cyclists, both of which, Kentish Town Road and Haverstock Hill, present no opportunities for creating cycle lanes, so planners have fallen back on a smaller road which carries very little cycle traffic, but is an easier target.

If they succeed, they will only create another meaningless fragment of a non-existent network, like the one already achieved in Royal College Street.

It is revealing that the plans stop abruptly when things get complicated going east after Grafton Road, at the meeting of five roads around the swimming baths.

So the plans cover the easy part and give up when real dangers appear. They provide just part of a part of a supposed network, a mole’s-eye type of planning at its most extreme.

Among the hazards created for pedestrians by the scheme, the removal of refuges in the middle of zebras and junctions is easily overlooked, but you only have to watch traffic in the road for a short while to see pedestrians, especially old people but not only them, using and being glad of the refuges.